The present invention relates to wireless communication devices, such as cellular handsets, and particularly relates to tailoring electronic content retrieval, such as content from a web feed, to the capabilities of such devices.
Web feeds represent an increasingly popular means for providing electronic content. As one example, establishing a web feed is accomplished by placing an extensible Markup Language (XML) document on a network-accessible computer, e.g., a web server. More particularly, the XML document includes an item list with embedded electronic content, or with links to such content. Feed subscribers watch or otherwise monitor the file for item list changes, so that new content can be accessed when it becomes available.
Various mechanisms exist for subscribing to web feeds. As one example, a personal computer (PC) may be configured with aggregator software. Aggregators monitor selected web feeds and provide their users with updated content listings, and can be configured to automatically retrieve updated content from selected feeds. Aggregators that target specific types of feeds generally have specialized names. For example, aggregators targeting news feeds (e.g., RSS-based news feeds) are often referred to as news readers, while aggregators targeting “podcast” feeds are often referred to as “podcatchers.”
Podcast feeds typically comprise item lists that include or link to audio files, e.g., MP3 files, but the term does not exclude other content type, such as images, video, etc. Podcasting perhaps finds its greatest use by both professionals and amateurs in publishing serial audio content to the web. For example, well known radio (or online) talk and special interest programs oftentimes are made available as downloadable audio or video files through web feeds that are updated as new content is posted. So called “bloggers” also frequently post new content, which may be downloaded by interested users through the corresponding web feeds.
Podcatching and other content retrieval operations become more challenging in the mobile environment. For example, depending on the nature and current operating conditions of the retrieving (mobile) device, its capabilities may be quite limited or relatively expansive. Some limitations may be inherent, such as screen size and resolution, color depth, audio quality, audio/video codec support, processing capability (e.g., frames per second), supportable file types and sizes, maximum connection speed, etc. Other limitations may be transient in nature, such as available memory capacity of the retrieving device and the variability of achievable data rates as a function of changing radio access network types and/or changing radio conditions.